What Does the Parish Council Do?
Following the excitements of the recent, hotly contested elections, we
may find ourselves asking each other what the new parish council will
actually do. Here is a simple account of how things work round here.
The highest tier of government locally is Oxfordshire County Council. It is
responsible for roads, public health, children’s services, and adult social
care, and it channels funding to the police.
The second tier is the District Council, responsible for housing, leisure
and recreation, environmental health, waste collection, planning
applications and local taxation collections. Our local District Council is the
Vale of White Horse, based in Abingdon, but it has combined with South
Oxfordshire as South & Vale to run some things jointly.
The third and lowest tier is the Parish Council, which is responsible for
Allotments and Playing Fields (and other green spaces) and for feeding
grassroots information back to the District Council. So, for instance, local
planning applications are all vetted by the Parish Council’s Planning
Committee, which sends recommendations back to the District Council.
(The District Council may choose to ignore these if there are wider issues
involved.) In the context of planning, all Parish Councils were asked to
write Neighbourhood Plans describing their areas and setting out criteria
for future development. These are taken into account when Planning
decisions are made. North Hinksey Neighbourhood Plan is on the Council
website, via the Planning Committee page.
You may be wondering how all this is funded – and the answer is very
complicated. Much too complicated to delve into here – though if
you really want to know, there is good information on
https://www.newlocal.org.uk/articles/council-finance-explained.
How does the parish council actually work? Numbers vary, but ours is
composed of 14 volunteers – your elected parish councillors – aided by
the parish clerk, a paid post. The clerk is often also the finance officer,
but current arrangements have divided the job into two part-time posts,
and, following recent interviews, new staff should be in place very soon.
Meetings are held monthly (apart from August) and this year’s chair is Cllr
Lorna Berrett. The vice chair is David Kay. Council operates with several
committees, including: Planning (chair, Adam Rankin); Recreation and
Amenities (chair, Jamie Spooner); Finance and General Purposes
(consists of the chairs of all the committees, plus two other councillors
with wide knowledge of the parish, sets and reviews the budgets);